


It Comes And Goes In Waves

by attheendoftheday



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, What else is new, and as in all my fics Sirius and James are POC. just so we're clear, me just projecting my feelings onto Sirius
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:54:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22242166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attheendoftheday/pseuds/attheendoftheday
Summary: The year is 1972. Sirius Black is twelve years old. He is a Gryffindor and a member of the most noble and ancient house of Black. His favorite record has a picture of a Muggle man wearing makeup on the front cover.Sometimes he can’t breathe.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 65





	It Comes And Goes In Waves

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my WIPs folder for far too long, so here it is. Kind of low effort, but whatever.
> 
> Please leave a comment with any thoughts, feelings, emotions, epiphanies, jokes, insults, or constructive criticism!

The year is 1972. Sirius Black is twelve years old. He is a Gryffindor and a member of the most noble and ancient house of Black. His favorite record has a picture of a Muggle man wearing makeup on the front cover. 

Sometimes he can’t breathe.

He doesn’t know where they come from. He sits in classes, or more often he lays in his bed after all the other boys have gone to sleep, and he stares at the black ceiling and feels the inside of his stomach knot over itself until he thinks he’s going to vomit. He almost never does.

His throat closes. Usually it starts out of nowhere, or when he starts thinking about his family or Reg or anything else too much. Sometimes it starts in the common room, in the middle of a normal conversation. James watches him out of the corner of his eye, because a gap in conversation where Sirius would normally make his presence known is generally a wide, noticeable one, spanning several minutes and decibel levels. Sirius just keeps on smiling, jaw clenched. He doesn’t know what else to do.

He looks at Remus. Remus is quiet. He has freckles and several scars and odd, yellow-brown eyes. Sirius can’t quite place their color, but they ease the pain in his throat. They constrict his chest, though, in a way that’s not unpleasant.

-

Sirius is thirteen, and he is unsure of which is disappearing faster: himself or the world around him.

He wakes up one morning (breathing through the invisible hand gripped tight around his throat, the tightness of breath and coiling of his insides a norm, now,) to find that nothing can touch him. It’s ice cold in the corners of the castle, in the middle of winter, but he feels no chill. 

He would be perplexed at this development, but can’t muster the energy. His body is filled with lead.

The boys notice, he thinks dully. They look at him, worried. Sometimes Sirius catches them talking when he enters the room and they quiet immediately, turning to him with sunny smiles, the corners of their mouths turned up artificially high. He can’t bring himself to mind. He spends much time staring at walls. The stone of the common room is not particularly illuminating, but the rough edges and texture and occasional pockets of air feel like something when he rubs his bare skin across it.

He kisses a girls at the parties before the winter holidays, Firewhiskey smuggled into the common rooms of each House. Their sticky lip gloss coats the inside of his mouth and it’s past 1 in the morning when he breaks away from them to run to the bathroom, heaving over the toilet, nothing coming up. He rests his head on his knees.

“Sirius?” a voice calls from the entrance to the bathroom. Sirius recognizes it, but just breathes. If his breaths are as loud as he thinks they are, no one will have a problem trying to find him.

“Can I come in?” Remus asks. Sirius doesn’t respond, just huddles in the corner. He’s left the door unlocked, anyway. Sloppy.

A body kneels down next to him. He doesn’t know what is happening, because everything is dizzy, and although he can concentrate on those odd yellow eyes everything around it is moving sideways and diagonal and too fast for the situation at hand. Sirius raises a hand to his face and it comes away wet. 

He feels arms wrap around him, trying to heave him up from the floor, and that’s the last of his memory for the night. 

The next morning he wakes up and the cement block in his chest seems to have chinked away somewhat slightly, although it could be because its cousin is pounding away in his head. Sirius opens his eyes a crack, wincing at the sunlight and not wanting to even check what time it could possibly be — he may have missed lunch, breakfast already lost cause, although the idea of putting any food in his stomach makes his insides lurch unpleasantly. Still, for a moment, the weight has softened, his insides feeling like they’ve melted and rush blood rather than metal underneath his skin. 

-

Sirius is fourteen, and Remus charms the curtain with four spells Sirius has heard before and nine that he hasn’t and holds him in his bunk, arms wrapped tight as Sirius rubs his own chest and tries to breathe. Sirius feels hollow, like his nerves are frayed and bound to unravel at any moment. But Remus is there, and Sirius feels sturdy and held together for once, safe and almost innocent.  
-

Sirius is fifteen when it all falls apart again.


End file.
